by MARY M. COX
Manufacturer List
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The website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers plenty of helpful information about how to donate and recycle unwanted electronics. Also noted are some of the benefits that can result from making the effort to recycle: Recycling 1 million laptops saves energy equivalent to the electricity used by more than 3,500 homes in a year. Also, for every million cell phones recycled, 35,000 lbs. of copper, 772 lbs. of silver, 75 lbs. of gold and 33 lbs. of palladium can be recovered. Overall, the highest volume commodities recovered are plastics and metals but the markets for both materials have been struggling. The highest value commodities found in scrap electronics are the circuit boards and nonferrous metals, although conditions have been quite challenging in those specific markets as well.
Granutech-Saturn Systems manufactures many types and sizes of shredders that are well suited for e-scrap recycling. “The most common is our Saturn® Dual-Shaft and Quad-Shaft slow-speed, high-torque shredders,” noted Greg Wright, sales manager. He added, “Many operations use a Saturn dual shaft shredder for initial shredding, then use a magnet for ferrous separation, then use manual pickers stationed post-shred to hand pick items such as circuit boards, small electric motors, stainless steel, copper, and aluminum. It is also important to have pickers on the separated ferrous fraction as electric motors and circuit boards can end up in the ferrous stream. Larger processors may incorporate a Saturn Quad Shaft shredder as a second stage to further reduce material size before sending it to an eddy current separator for nonferrous separation. Others may grind material smaller with our Saturn Grizzly or hammermill and utilize more sophisticated separation technologies such as an e-ray. Most of our customer’s e-scrap recycling operations have typical processing volumes of between one to five tons per hour but Granutech-Saturn offers equipment that can handle up to 20 tons if required.”
Wright also explained that in low commodity price markets, minimizing labor hours per ton processed is critical to the success of an organization. Recovering the plastic fraction as early in the process as possible is also desirable as buyers of this material generally prefer a larger fraction for their separation and processing needs.
In business since the late 1960s, the Granutech-Saturn product line is broad and deep, including grinders and granulators, single, dual and quad shaft shredders, hammermills, crushers, balers and loggers. The Saturn shredder line offers numerous sizes, types, and technologies to meet a variety of applications with optional hybrid-drive, for best of both worlds technology.
Shred Tech offers full turn-key electronic scrap recycling systems that use both two shaft and four shaft shredders for the reduction of electronics. “We use a combination of high and low speed shredders along with separation equipment to reduce various scrap electronics to a small enough particle size that enables various materials to then be separated and recycled,” Ian Richardson, sales engineer, said.
“Of course, with any electronic scrap recycling system, it is ideal if there is a good supply of feed materials. This can often be achieved by partnering with customers who recycle those reclaimed materials. Because electronic scrap comes in many forms and sizes, it is important to select a primary shredder that can handle any kind of electronic scrap you throw at it. The Shred-Tech ST-400E shredder is the industry standard when it comes to reducing big bulky electronics like photocopiers and servers,” Richardson stated.
He cited an increasingly common trend: “New electronics are introduced to the marketplace every year and the life cycle of those electronics become shorter and shorter, so the business climate for electronic scrap recycling is poised for growth. Richardson said that Shred-Tech is ready to take on that growth as one of the leading manufacturers in the industry.”
SSI Shredding Systems engineers and manufactures industrial shredders and automated systems to process all varieties of electronic scrap – from consumer to commercial grade – for recycling, reclamation and recovery, worldwide. The company has a wide variety of primary and secondary shredding machines with capacities from 2 to 15 tons per hour as well as fully integrated material recovery systems. “SSI shredders and automated material recovery systems are employed in many of the largest e-scrap processing facilities around the world,” commented Dave Fleming, sales and marketing director.
Commercial grade e-scrap, typically consisting of items like network servers, printers, mainframes and copy machines, are generally pre-processed using SSI’s primary reduction equipment known as PRI-MAX® primary reducers. These heavy duty, low-speed, high-torque shredders combine ripping and shearing technologies to shred, pierce, split, and break apart large, bulky e-scrap to the point where solid metal items and high value sub components can be easily harvested prior to further processing.
SSI offers a variety of technologies with place-in automated recovery systems designed to process and separate materials into marketable commodity fractions. “The ‘heart’ of these systems is SSI QUAD® technology, which produces well liberated and sized material at high production rates to systems that are designed in a modular format, so customers can add processes over time as their business grows,” Fleming said.
SSI’s patented SmartFeed™ system is available in unique system configurations developed to process the “dirty ferrous” materials generated in many automated recovery systems and liberate ferrous and nonferrous metals in that fraction to the extent possible. SmartFeed is a patented method of controlling a dual drive, two-shaft shredder in a way that limits the material feeding into the cutters as well as controls the particle size produced, allowing the shredder to become much less dependent on cutter configuration (i.e., cutter thickness, number of hooks, hook height). Fleming explained that over the last 18 months, he’s seen commodity values fall significantly. As a result, the general trend of electronic scrap recycling, as an industry, has been reduced as well. E-scrap recyclers, however, continue to refine their markets to try and harvest additional value from materials wherever possible, with the least amount of capital investment.
Published in the March 2016 Edition of American Recycler News
